ESPE Abstracts

Background: Recently we demonstrated that male adolescents with severe GHD (sGHD) had a significant decrease of lean body mass and increase in fat mass after stop of GH-therapy. The functional consequence of this observation is unknown.

Objective and hypotheses: The aim was to study the changes in parameters of jumping mechanography in adolescents with GHD in the transition period (end of growth) after stop of GH-therapy.

Patients and method: We studied 64 (N=17 girls) patients with idiopathic childhood-onset GHD. GH-therapy was stopped at the end of growth to retest the GH-axis (age 16.4±1.5 years, height −0.5±0.9 SDS). We performed jumping mechanography with the Leonardo ground-reaction-force-plate (NovoTec Medical, Germany) at the end of GH-therapy and 6 months thereafter. We analyzed peak jump power (PJP in W), PJP/kg body weight (in W/kg) and time in air (tAir in sec.). sGHD was defined as GH peak in Arg-GHRH-Test <16 ng/ml and IGF1 <−1 SDS.

Results: 13 patients had sGHD and in 51 patients GHD was transitory (tGHD). Prior to stop of GH in both patient groups PJP, PJP/kg and tAir were similar (2.7 vs 2.5 W and 46.6 vs 43.0 W/kg and 0.467 vs 0.447 sec. in tGHD vs. sGHD). After stop of GH in sGHD patients PJP, PJP/kg and tAir decreased significantly ((Δ=−0.17 W, −3.33 W/kg and −0.019 sec, P<0.01) in tGHD patients PJP, PJP/kg and tAir did not change significantly (Δ=0.01 W, −0.69 W/kg and 0.000 sec.). There were no significant differences in changes between boys and girls. Peak GH did not correlate significantly with change in PJP, PJP/kg and tAir, but it correlated significantly with PJP/kg (r=0.27, P=0.0332) and, only in boys, with tAir (r=0.33, P=0.021) 6 months after stop of GH.

Conclusion: In severe GHD decrease of muscle mass results in a significant decrease of jumping performance after 6 months.

Conflict of interest: Schweizer und Binder got presentation fees from Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer.